“He was the best hire we never hired” recruiter says of Alek Minassian

At 2 p.m. on April 19, 2017, Alek Minassian attended a job interview at a company at Yonge St. and Finch Ave. Despite his impressive technical knowledge and skills, Minassian wasn’t hired.

“He was the best hire we never hired,” the recruiter told his boss on Tuesday when Minassian’s name surfaced in the news. Metroland Media Toronto has obtained Minassian’s three-page resumé from last spring.

Minassian’s most recent place of employment at the time was Toogood Financial Systems on Commerce Valley Dr. in Thornhill. He worked there as a QA (quality assurance) developer from May 2016 until October 2016 when he was let go, the company’s chief operating officer confirmed in a phone interview on Wednesday.

Minassian’s resumé said he developed test scripts to automatically test the functionality of the organization’s web application and “manually performed test cases to ensure the web application is working as intended.”

Between November 2015 and March 2016, Minassian worked in product development as a software developer in Mississauga.

His resumé states he “worked on the design and implementation of a wine shopping application.”

The application, the resumé said, uses “data visualization strategies to quickly engage customers and help them with their purchasing decisions.”

Between May and August 2015, Minassian’s resumé said he worked in the IT department of the OMERS pension plan (Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System) as part of a “co-op term” where he “performed regression tests on existing application functionality to ensure they were not broken by new functionality.”

“I can confirm that Alek Minassian worked for OMERS as a summer student in 2015,” OMERS vice-president Ann DeRabbie said in an email. “We will co-operate with authorities to provide any information that may be helpful as they investigate this tragedy; however, it is our policy to not publicly discuss current or former employees. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families.”

Between September 2013 and April 2014, Minassian’s resumé said he worked part time as a software developer at Seneca College’s Centre for Development of Open Technology where he was part of a team that “worked on an Android application which is used for connecting to medical devices, such as a blood pressure monitor, through Bluetooth and obtaining a reading of all the information.”

The college wouldn’t confirm or deny that Minassian was an employee.

“Along with the rest of the city, and world, we are extremely troubled by this week’s events. For privacy reasons we do not disclose information about our students and employees,” Seneca spokesperson Lisa Pires wrote in an email. “Out of respect for all those involved, we will not be providing further comment. We ask the media to respect our community during this difficult time.”

In July and August 2010, Minassian’s resumé said he worked in the accounts payable department of Compugen, a Richmond Hill company, where he “sorted and filed invoices” and “shredded documents.”

However, Donald Anderson, the company’s corporate communications manager, said the company has no record of Alek Minassian being an employee there. “However, we didn’t know if he had been here as a co-operative education student. And we don’t have records of co-op going back that far,” Anderson said. “We do employ his mother, who is now on leave for obvious reasons.”

Minassian’s resumé lists his high school volunteer experience as tree planting, “food bank” and sorting and filing client applications at HelpMate.

The resumé states that Minassian went to Seneca College between September 2011 and April 2016 and that he earned a bachelor of software development.

The resumé lists Minassian’s “technical skills” in web development, android development, programming languages, databases, system analysis and design, virtualization software and operating systems.

The resumé also describes his “academic projects” in android application and web application.